Project Quotes: General Information

In MYOB Advanced, you can create a project quote to estimate the revenue and costs of a potential project and then send this quote to the customer. You can use the quote for planning purposes before you create a project in the system and begin billing and accounting for revenues and costs. Each modification of a project quote can be printed and sent to the customer for review, and you can modify the quote as many times as is necessary until an agreement is reached. After the customer agrees to the terms of a quote, you can convert the accepted quote to a project.

Learning Objectives

You will learn how to do the following:

Create a project quote based on an opportunity
Specify the settings of a quote by using a project template
Estimate the potential revenue and costs of a potential project
Create a project based on a project quote

Applicable Scenarios

You create a project quote if you want to send a proposal to the customer or potential customer before you create a project, or if you need to agree with the customer about the terms of a potential project before creating the project.

Creation of Project Quotes

You can create project quotes in the system if the Project Quotes feature is enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. You create project quotes on the Project Quotes (PM304500) form. In a new project quote, you specify the following settings:

The description of the project quote.
The project template, which the system uses to populate the project tasks, attributes, and project manager of the project quote. You can change these default settings, if needed.
Tip: If you first specify the project tasks, attributes, and project manager of the project quote, and then select the project template, the system will prompt you to indicate that you can either replace your specified settings with the settings of the project template or leave your specified settings.
The business account associated with the project quote.
Based on the settings specified for the selected business account, the system inserts the financial details on the Financial tab and the contact information on the Addresses tab. You can override these settings, if needed.
Optional: The project tasks on the Project Tasks tab, which are copied from the selected project template by default (but you can modify the project tasks inserted based on the template). You can also add common tasks to the project quote.
The estimated labor and material costs and prices on the Estimation tab. If you convert the project quote to a project, the system populates the revenue and cost budgets of the project based on the settings specified on this tab.

When you have specified all the needed settings, you save the project quote with the Draft status. When you have finished modifying the project quote, you submit the quote by clicking Submit on the form toolbar. A submitted project quote is assigned the Prepared status and is ready for further processing.

You can email a submitted project quote to the customer by clicking Email on the More menu. Once the project quote is sent, the system performs the following actions:

Creates the corresponding email activity and lists it on the Activities tab of the form
Attaches the printable version of the quote to the email activity and sends it to the recipient
Changes the status of the quote to Sent

If you need to modify a project quote, you click Edit on the form toolbar. The quote is assigned the Draft status and can be modified.

Note: If you need to modify an existing project quote but also want to leave its original version intact (for example, to have a complete history of the submitted quotes), you can create a copy of the project quote by clicking the Copy command; you then modify the copy.

Estimation of the Revenue and Costs

The lines on the Estimation tab of the Project Quotes (PM304500) form represent the estimated revenue and costs of a project quote. When you create a project based on the project quote, the system converts to lines of the revenue and cost budgets based on details specified in each line:

An estimation line with an account group specified in the Revenue Account Group column establishes revenue; the Ext. Price of the line is the estimated revenue amount.
An estimation line with an account group specified in the Cost Account Group column establishes costs; the Ext. Cost of the line is the estimated cost amount.
Estimation lines with both the Revenue Account Group and the Cost Account Group specified establish revenue and costs at the same time.

Creation of a Project Based on a Project Quote

You can convert a project quote to a project if the project quote has the Prepared or Sent status. Before you convert the project quote, the following settings must be specified for it in the Summary area of the Project Quotes (PM304500) form:

Project Template: The template to be used for inserting the default settings of the project to be created
Business Account: The customer of the project
New Project ID: The identifier of the project to be created

After you have specified the project template, business account, and project ID, you click Convert to Project on the form toolbar of the Project Quotes form. In the Convert to Project dialog box, which opens, you specify the settings to be used for the created project and click OK. The system opens the project created based on the project quote on the Projects (PM301000) form, and assigns the project quote the Closed status. For this project, a link to the project quote is displayed in the Quote Ref. Nbr. box on the Summary tab (Quote section) of the Projects (PM301000) form.

Tip: If you delete the project, the system changes the status of the project quote from Closed to Prepared, so you can assign the Draft status to the project quote, edit it, if needed, and again create a project based on the project quote.

Workflow of Project Quotes

The following diagram illustrates the workflow of a project quote being processed.